Will Smith admits After Earth was 'excruciating'

Hollywood star Will Smith has confessed that he feels guilty about getting his son Jaden "involved in 'After Earth'"

Will Smith feels guilty about getting his son Jaden "involved in After Earth".

The 46-year-old actor starred alongside his son in the 2013 sci-fi film and has revealed the movie's negative reaction was more difficult to accept than the response to the action-comedy movie 'Wild Wild West'.

He explained: "Wild Wild West was less painful than 'After Earth' because my son was involved in After Earth and I led him into it. That was excruciating. What I learned from that failure is how you win.

"I got reinvigorated after the failure of After Earth. I stopped working for a year and a half. I had to dive into why it was so important for me to have number-one movies. And I never would have looked at myself in that way."

However, Will says the failure of 'After Earth' taught him a valuable life lesson.

He told Esquire magazine: "I was a guy who, when I was fifteen my girlfriend cheated on me, and I decided that if I was number one, no woman would ever cheat on me.

"All I have to do is make sure that no one's ever better than me and I'll have the love that my heart yearns for.

"And I never released that and moved into a mature way of looking at the world and my artistry and love until the failure of After Earth, when I had to accept that it's not a good source of creation."